


Thy Fearful Symmetry

by Zara_Zara



Category: Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Angst with a smidge of fluff, Canon Compliant, Character Death, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, L ruminates about Light, M/M, Poetry, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:21:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23723758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zara_Zara/pseuds/Zara_Zara
Summary: “In a room filled with sleep, L gazes at a sleeping young man who is both his undoing and necessity.”There is something about Yagami Light which possesses poetry.
Relationships: L/Yagami Light
Comments: 8
Kudos: 54





	Thy Fearful Symmetry

**Author's Note:**

> Hey Death Note fandom, I'm new in town~  
> Like, I literally got into the fandom a couple weeks ago after many years of putting it off lol.  
> With that being said, please don't kill me.

_Tyger Tyger, burning bright,_

_In the forests of the night;_

_What immortal hand or eye,_

_Could frame thy fearful symmetry?_

***

In a room filled with sleep, L gazes at a sleeping young man who is both his undoing and necessity. 

L’s laptop has completely gone dark as he traces his eyes along the soft lines of Light’s fearfully beautiful, and symmetrical face. Not for the last time, L marvels over the peace that sleeps in each of Light’s soft breaths. Beholds the delicacy that lingers under the surface of Light’s normally kaleidoscopic face. A face prone to a plethora of emotions that he displays all over his handsome features as zealously as an artist with a thousand tubes of paint. 

L can behold Light but he can never truly understand him. It's much like standing at the edge of a forest, looking at all the trees, and knowing that something malignant dwells in its shadows. Only able to catch glimpses of its striped orange and black pelt between the pillars of trees. Holding his breath with dreadful anticipation for the moment that he locks eyes with the predator who lurks in the thick shadows of the night: _Kira_. 

Kira knows how to frame Light into a manipulative picture of an innocent, harmless college student. Kira calculates the exact amount of emotion to unveil in Light’s eyes. Whether it be frustration, fright, or formality. The only true emotion Kira ever dares show is his anger, but that’s only because it is such an all-consuming emotion. If L were able to see it manifest he is sure it would burn the boy alive in brilliant red flames---it would be beautiful for all of two seconds until his body contorted under the weight of its torture.

***

_In what distant deeps or skies._

_Burnt the fire of thine eyes?_

_On what wings dare he aspire?_

_What the hand, dare seize the fire?_

***

L brings a thumb to his mouth and lightly chews on the nail. 

Kira must think himself the modern Prometheus. 

L could very well imagine that he would make a good Prometheus. Handsome, intelligent, and godly. A man who wants to bring fire, a new life, to the ignorant humans who know no other life than what exists in the mud. Kira believes that he wields a heavenly flame, and that the life in its brilliance dances in his amber eyes with promises of safety and justice. But Kira is not the Prometheus of his story. For, if L has his way, it will go a little differently: Prometheus will never introduce the flame to the humans because Kira's flame is warped and twisted. It is a flame that is destined to destroy, not nurture. 

Even if Kira doesn't introduce the flame of his sick plans to humanity, Prometheus’s and Kira’s fate will entwined in punishment: isolation. It brings some semblance of comfort to L to know that Light will most definitely not be eternally chained to a mountain where an eagle will swoop out of the sky to gorge out his liver once a day.

No, Kira is no Prometheus. 

In the light of the dim morning sun, L sees Light for what he is: Icarus. 

A young man filled with naiveté and arrogance who is destined to fly too close to the sun and drown. It saddens L to think of such a thing, because while he'd like to believe otherwise, he thinks that Light must've been destined to fall all along. Why else would something as perfect as him exist? Even the most glorious and catastrophic of wild fires have to die; Light was always doomed to be extinguished.

**_Boom._ **

L barely twitches at the sound of distant bells. They remind him of what he would rather forget: he is going to lose. Just as Light is doomed, so is L. Perhaps L won't be around to see Light fall, but the truth is, he doesn’t even want to see it when it happens. If they weren't doomed, L would want to catch Light and his mechanical wings of feathers and wax right before the golden youth leaps out of his high tower. That would be L’s ideal situation. Capture him before he goes somewhere L can’t follow. 

Except, L suspects that Light will leap away and soar straight towards the sun while L plummets to the ground. 

***

_And what shoulder, & what art, _

_Could twist the sinews of thy heart?_

_And when thy heart began to beat,_

_What dread hand? & what dread feet? _

***

Sometimes L has the desperate urge to hold Light’s heart in his hands. To confirm that it’s living and mortal. That it pumps blood just like L’s does. Perhaps he won't use the same means that L used to confirm his own mortality because no matter how much the boy frustrates and angers him, no matter how many punches and kicks they throw at each other, he would rather die than raise a knife anywhere near Light. That still doesn't erase the fact that he sometimes desperately needs to confirm Light's heart isn’t all just cavernous secrets and cool shadows. That L could light a candle inside it and trust Light won't blow it out before he sees too much. 

Light sighs a sleepy little sigh and nestles his face into his pillow a little more. The sight of this churns L’s heart a little helplessly. 

The auburn-haired young man is by far the most complex conundrum L has encountered; paradoxically, he is also the clearest thing L has ever seen. It’s bizarre, the way that L can see right through Light and all his lies and manipulations, and yet when he tries to go deeper than that, L gets lost. Light disorients him, he makes him constantly feel like he’s in a maze where there are nothing but left-corners. Light ignites his curiosity; Light drives him insane. When it comes to Light, L can't win. And at this point, he's addicted to it...To him. 

There is something about Yagami Light which possesses poetry. His soft tenor is perfect for reciting poetry, for charming audiences, for giving purposeful speeches---no matter their true intent. Light is Blake's tyger, Shakespeare's fair youth, and Milton's tragic Lucifer all wrapped up in an elegant Japanese package. Clever amber eyes and an even smarter tongue make a poet of L, a man who is notoriously the furthest thing from poetic. Admittedly, he does dabble in the nonsensical, but those are all empty words with even emptier foundations. The things Light makes him think about are far from empty, and they often delight in troubling L with the weight of them. 

_His eyes can be warm, and when they are, I feel firecrackers in my gut._

_The curve of his spine is sweet as cinnamon_ _._

_Holding him is holding home._

L wants to resent Light for making him feel disorientated. He wants to hate him for casting irregular shifts of agitation, frustration, begrudging respect, awe, and sympathy in his normally passive facade. Those are far too many feelings to have to combat away from his face on a daily basis---it's exhausting for L to keep his mask on when Light constantly bats at it like he's got something to prove. It would be so much easier if L were behind the screen and someone nameless and faceless again because a computer screen and a calligraphy L are not supposed to have feelings.

To L's turmoil, Light makes him feel whether he wants to or not. He makes his mind feel alive, as if it’s not just some other (above average) organ but something stellar. When the two of them converse, debate, touch, or make love, Light makes L feel stellar, astral, shining when he’s always felt spectral---somewhere between living and dying, between existent and nothingness. 

When they kiss, Light has a way of making each breath feel like the last. 

***

_What the hammer? what the chain,_

_In what furnace was thy brain?_

_What the anvil? what dread grasp,_

_Dare its deadly terrors clasp!_

***

The chain that binds them together gleams a sickly silver. 

Death comes with the job description of the greatest detective of the world---or, more accurately, the three greatest detectives of the world. L was never under any delusions that he would live to grow gnarled and ancient. On the contrary, he was always under the belief that he'd die by his own hand either by malnourishment or a bad drug hit---although, he has long dropped that habit, he is not ready to put that possibility entirely out of the equation. L had no particular desire to die by any other person's hand. Or more accurately, he actually _despised_ the thought of such a thing occurring until he encountered Kira.

There is nothing, no one other than Kira that L would want to destroy him. His greatest adversary, his intellectual equal, his other half. If L were to die by the hands of some other meaningless criminal or due to some freak accident, then his life would have been meaningless. Those deaths are cheap and quick. Kira makes him struggle for his life. He's constantly aware of his impending doom in his peripheral vision and it both frightens and excites him. Kira is the dark creature in the woods that will root in his veins and then crush him from the inside, doing all of this while wearing Light's face. It's sick. It's the sickest thing L can think of and yet it's the only way he would ever want to die.

Kira, Light---L's been waiting at the edge of the woods for him for far too long. L hardly remembers his life before Kira and Light. It's like he's been waiting all his life for him. 

Light’s hair is soft as he subconsciously threads his fingers through the auburn strands. 

Beneath these soft autumn-colored strands, hides one of the most brilliant minds L has ever encountered. A spectacular machine that runs on the purest of prides and cleverness. The golden gears Light's head must churn in relentless efficiency even when he’s asleep and dreaming. L is aware that Light was the blacksmith of his own mind. He put in the time and effort to weld and sharpen his brain to such a fine point that it can cleanly slice into any complication with minimal effort. God, the sparks that each clash of the anvil must’ve had in welding his mind must’ve been spectacular. 

A ray of light catches on Light's hair and warms it into a gentle honey. 

Then there is that other possibility that L hardly dare entertain: what would happen if he were to live while Light died? As with most things, L already has an answer for it. If Light were to die before him, the world would seem so much more emptier than before. L could envision it now, he’d take on case after case after case, wearing himself out bone dry until he was nothing other than a pile of ash. It would be very difficult to forget Light. 

***

_When the stars threw down their spears_

_And water'd heaven with their tears:_

_Did he smile his work to see?_

_Did he who made the Lamb make thee?_

***

It feels like they are constantly on borrowed time. 

Like any second, the other shoe will drop and everything he and Light have tentatively built between them will get all shredded away. It sorrows him to think that they couldn't possibly exist at the same time. Even what they are doing now must be blasphemous to some law of the universe. Some ridiculous law that dictates that something that is everything cannot exist at the same time as something that is nothing. But when have they ever respected the law?

L’s fingers continue their ruminations in Light’s hair as Light’s eyes begin to flutter open. Sleep trickles away from Light’s eyes as they land on L. L doesn’t move his hand from his head and his face remains the same as Light feigns annoyance, “You woke me.” Despite the slight frown, Light’s eyes gaze up at L brightly and fondly.

“My apologies, Light-kun." 

"You're not sorry," Light huffily draws the blankets higher over his shoulder and slowly blinks at L as if he is something to behold. It makes L feel warm.

He just silently chews on his lip, lets the corner of his lip lift very slightly, and returns Light's slowly blinking stare. 

Light mutters, "Jerk," into his blankets and closes his eyes once again. Not to sleep, but to take in the peace of the moment like L had been doing.

L’s ruminating fingers continue wading through Light’s hair and he sighs.

L often wonders if his doomed fate is written in the stars. And if it is, how? Does it spell Kira’s name? Light’s? Or does his doom simply exist in the cold, bright lights of the billions of stars in the universe. 

***

_Tyger Tyger burning bright,_

_In the forests of the night:_

_What immortal hand or eye,_

_Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?_

***

When L’s heart wrenches it’s final beats, he stares up into Light Yagami’s asymmetrical face. Kira's true face burns through, and its twisted Light's face into an expression of raptures victory that looks indescribably painful. As all goes dark and L fades to nothingness, Light's presence is still a beautiful thing to him. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic for the fandom and I just felt compelled to write this story after reading William Blake's The Tyger and being like...Hey, that's perfect for Light.
> 
> Anywho, hoped you liked. I got another fic up my sleeve but I'm not throwing it down till I write the whole thing out. Maybe I'll write something short like this in the meantime tho.
> 
> Come find me at Tumblr @lightsredapple  
> X)


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